Let's Get Honest! Absolutely Uncommon Analysis of Family & Conciliation Courts' Operations, Practices, & History

If you just got this post by Twitter or as a wordpress follower, know it wasn’t fully-cooked yet. I was in the process of separating one long into two shorter posts — Looks like “Save Draft” was NOT pressed and “Publish” was.

Some of my published posts my also look half-baked (or too “runny”) but I have a little pride left — and that one was definitely not ready for public. So expect a better version. I’ll change the title some.

I don’t believe I’d even made the main point yet!……

Unless a lifetime of welfare, begging, or fighting in the courts sounds like fun, I suggest people learn to get a grip (understand), if not from me, from someone better equipped to relate this — about which way the winds are blowing, which is to say, which way the money (income-producing assets, aka “wealth”) is flowing.

We ought to have a post — or a page at a minimum — on the Carlyle Group (a very interesting history), at a minimum at least 150 years of recent history spanning two or three continents (like: United States, Europe (London, Germany, the Netherlands, etc. — and Africa). I got a start on another blog over at:

I figure there are different approaches:

Passive — let someone else deal with it, and think about it, and go back to work (thereby contributing to the problem — by contributing to the investment platform which, given a little attention, it’s pretty obvious workers are doing. Which sheds a different understanding on the whole concept of the income tax, the Social Security Act, (social services per se) and a lot more.

Active — jump in, and by doing also get the understanding, and at least improve your personal situation. This should also free up some time for more political activity, which is definitely needed.

ANYHOW — here’s a Pension and Investments on-line that as of 12/27/2010 is reporting on the largest FOUNDATIONS based on their pension holdings, for the year 2009.

What amazes me is that, having done so many lookups, so very many of them have been dumping money into the courts, and promoting marriage and fatherhood, not to mention adoption incentives. I don’t see that any of them are particularly feminist or concerned about violence towards mothers AFTER they separate from abusive fathers…. Here’s that list.

I’m going to talk about #17 in this post. I brought up #5 in a post yesterday (CDRC post) and FYI, Ford, Robert Wood Johnson, Kellog, John d and Catherine T. MacAthur, Lilly (of course0, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Charles Stewart Mott, Cargill (although I forget for what) and others HAVE come up when it comes to family court matters. As has The Tulsa Initiative.

My first indicator was learning that MDRC (formerly Manpower Development Research Corporation), on which Ron Haskins, Isabella Sawhill and some others sit as board members — was formed in 1974 as a cooperative effort between FEDERAL government and PRIVATE agencies. I started reporting on it (particularly its piechart page showing funding) and “outing’ the multiple fatherhood demonstration projects written up in glowing terms (Parents Fair Share) which – from other web sources — were rife with overbilling, and subjected to audits. These foundations are all over the map (geographically) and “like white on rice’ when it comes to matters of controlling individual families’ relationships with their own (or so they thought!) kids!

So, at least read the list, OK?
From:

Pensions&Investments

(Pionline.com article dated 12/27/2010. Merry Christmas)

Largest foundations
Ranked by total assets, in U.S. billions, as of Dec. 31, 2009, unless otherwise noted.

Notes: 1: Data are as of Sept. 30, 2009. 2: Data are as of June 30, 2009. 3: Data are as of Aug. 31, 2009. 4: Data are as of Dec. 31, 2008. 5: Data are as of Feb. 28, 2009. 6: Data are as of March 31, 2009. 7: Data are as of June 30, 2010. Source: The Foundation Center

Through collective government investments from all individual governments across the United States, the government owns most of the major corporations in America, and beyond.

I’ll say it again, in a different way. Collectively, through investment, the United States government owns most major corporations and just about everything else in America.

It really boils down to economics, which are of course connected as well. So, like it or not, we ALL have to understand more than we do, and quit speaking into the air, without understanding what the walls of the room resonate to. As it turns out, a whole lot of private funding drives public policy that builds the rooms we are shouting about court corruption (etc.) in.

Look at a recent Wall Street Journal on how Private Equity Buyout Firms are now Building — Dams — instead:

Private Equity Firms Build Instead of Buy”

(the title is also a link to the article)
May 14, 2013, Wall Street Journal, in “Markets.” See photo:

The private-equity firm Blackstone, branching out from corporate takeovers, built a hydropower dam, above, on the White Nile in Uganda.

BUJAGALI, Uganda—A new dam at the headwaters of the White Nile, nearly 20 years in the making, generates almost half of this East African country’s electricity.

Its owner isn’t a state utility or an energy giant. It is Blackstone Group LP, best known for corporate takeovers.

The private-equity firm built the dam with partners and has a contract with energy-hungry Uganda to sell it power at rates that ensure profits for Blackstone for years to come.

The project, fraught with holdups that included a pirate hijacking and rituals to appease spirits before flooding an island, has little in common with the debt-fueled billion-dollar buyouts Blackstone helped popularize.

But the firm and its rivals increasingly are moving beyond the buyout playbook in search of other, sometimes unfamiliar sources of profit: drilling for oil in Oklahoma, building tract homes in North Dakota or shipping gasoline on the high seas.

What does private equity have to do with family courts, child protection, or anything else?
Well, guess where I heard about Blackstone (let alone Carlyle, another formerly Private Equity firm)?

Annie E. Casey Foundation. Here’s a fancy (visually clear, graphics, color, well-designed) January 2012 publication (just found) on an “AECF.org” (Annie E. Casey Foundation) website. It’s called “Skin In The Game” regarding Arizonans and put out by Children’s Advocacy Alliance (Board membership at the very back page).

Up front (about page 2) it quotes a billionaire founder of private equity Blackstone Group as saying Arizonans don’t have enough “skin in the game” — and this brochure is countering that, I gather in opposition to a movement for a flat tax to replace the graduated income tax. The general tone is Annie E. Casey is going to speak up for the poor people against this billionaire’s unfair mindset, from The Blackstone Group. Take a look: Page 3 is the Blackstone quote, look at a few other pages from this “Children’s Advocacy Alliance” of Arizona.

Annie E. Casey and its Foundation is all over the family court arena (especially when it comes to foster care and promoting responsible fatherhood). I have a topic over at Scranton Political Times on some of their involvements. They are a major philanthropy.

Look at how AECF makes ITS income: — here’s its 1999 tax return

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